the company had supposedly revenue of 150mil with net loses of around 100mil. my guess is that this was some kind of online shop with very tiny profit margins.
EDIT: who would be buying an online shop? the only company I know of is Amazon, could this company in the article be http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/30/woot-amazon/ ?
1. See if you can find anything on the VCs who backed Woot. There's nothing on Crunchbase and nothing on Google. No-one is trumpeting it as a success, or even mentioning it in their (previous) portfolios.
2. Purchase price was reportedly $110m in cash - exact same number as in this post.
3. Post says firm was founded by close friends. He seems to live in Seattle, which is where Woot is/was based.
4. Current CEO of Woot, and presumably CEO at the time, has protected his tweets.
Their founder is also their CEO.
The relative amounts are what matter. The story also now says he'll delete any comments on the blog speculating about the company in question.